NCKU Teams Shine at Innovation & Startups Final Competition

August 04, 2014 03:26 AM Eastern Daylight Time

TAINAN, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A total of four teams from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU),
southern Taiwan, won big at the competition of Innovation & Startups
program initiated by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), the
university revealed recently.

The four teams took home the Potential Startup Awards and were awarded a
prize of NT$ 600,000 dollars, respectively.

In addition, the biggest prize, Outstanding Startup Award which comes
with a NT$ 2,000,000 dollars grant, goes to three of the four NCKU teams.

The Innovation & Startups, a competitive grand program initiated by MOST
has awarded NT$ 2,000,000 dollars in startup funding to each of the
first five outstanding startup teams to help them move their research
results toward commercialization.

There are 233 teams participating the competition from February, only
ten teams were selected to receive the prize.

Cherub is one of the teams won the biggest prize for NCKU. “Cherub is
designed to apply high frequency electromagnetic thermotherapy to treat
big tumors in animal, and our method has great potential for future
clinical applications,” said Sheng-Chieh Huang, one of the designers in
Cherub and he has involved in the research and design for more than five
years.

He said, “Electromagnetic thermotherapy has been extensively
investigated recently and may become a new surgical modal for a variety
of medical applications.”

“It applies a high-frequency alternating magnetic field to heat up
magnetic materials inserted within the human body to generate tissue
coagulation or cell apoptosis,” Huang added.

The team used a new procedure with dual-row needle arrays under an
electromagnetic thermotherapy system with a feedback temperature control
system.

The research result shows bloodless liver resection, which is
challenging using existing methods, according to Huang.

Huang also indicated that “The Phase I clinical trials was finished this
June and processed to Phase II this July.”

The electromagnetic thermotherapy was also performed in the pet animals
and currently Cherub is aiming for pet medicine market, according to
Huang.